The Payback (11 page)

‘And why did he think you’d have that information?’

‘Because my brother works for a company that stores the PNR databases for a number of large airlines.’

‘What’s a PNR?’

‘It stands for passenger number record, and it’s a record in the
database of an airline’s computer reservation system that contains the itinerary of the passenger. Because of the size of the databases, they tend to be hosted by specialist companies like my brother’s rather than on the airline’s own systems. I’d got information about passenger manifests from him several years ago when I was researching a story, which is how Nick knew about the connection.’

‘And I’m assuming your brother’s not allowed to give out that information?’

‘Correct. But he has access to it, and on that occasion he did it as a once-in-a-lifetime favour to me.’

‘And this time?’

Singh sighed. ‘Nick was desperate. He genuinely believed he was on to something that might help in his libel defence against Wise. Under those circumstances, and considering he’d always been a good friend of mine, it was difficult to turn him down.’

‘What was it he was so interested in?’

‘Whether Wise had travelled to Cambodia and the Philippines on certain, different dates. One was in 2007, the other in 2008.’

Tina felt her heart begin to pound as she asked her final question. ‘And did he?’

‘Yes, he did.’

Between 12 and 18 September 2007, Paul Wise had been in Cambodia, and between 11 and 26 June 2008, he’d been in the Philippines. That was the extent of the information Satnam Singh had given to Nick Penny. According to Singh, they hadn’t discussed what Nick had needed it for. All Singh knew was that he’d needed it, and urgently.

Tina thanked him for his help, then called the Philippines landline number on Nick’s bill. It immediately went to automatic message, telling the caller that he or she was through to the
Manila Post
, that the main offices were currently closed, and giving another number
that could be called twenty-four hours a day to report a story.

Tina hung up. It was a quarter past six in the morning in the Philippines, and for a moment she considered calling the mobile, but stopped herself. She had no idea who the number belonged to, and if she called it this early, the person on the other end might be reluctant to cooperate.

Instead, she fed the digits of the number into the Google search box, and pressed Enter.

And hit the jackpot.

A company called Aztech Direct Rentals came up. Beneath it was a short advert for a vacation apartment to rent in a place called Anilao. The owner was listed as a Mr Pat O’Riordan, a name that was unfamiliar to Tina. Next to it was the mobile number from Nick Penny’s phone records.

She wrote down the information on the screen, and Googled the name Pat O’Riordan.

A long list of results came up on her laptop screen, and as she ran her eye down them she saw that there was a Pat O’Riordan, now retired, who manufactured high-quality concert whistles, whatever they were; another who was a tax accountant; nine who were listed on Linkedin, the business directory—

She froze. There it was, near the bottom. What she was looking for.

She double-clicked and started reading, a slow coldness creeping up her spine.

Because she now knew exactly why they’d had to kill Nick Penny.

It was the deep grey hour before dawn when I arrived at the address I’d been given, a compact-looking two-storey detached house set back behind thick foliage and a high stone wall topped with a line of rusting razor wire. Situated about halfway down a narrow residential backstreet, it looked like it had seen better days.

The house was dark and the street silent as I stopped at a solid iron gate. It had a sign on it which stated that the property was protected by a company called AAA Emergency Response Inc, which was no great worry since all it meant was that if my target got a chance to call them (which he wouldn’t), there was still a good five minutes minimum before they could get to the house, by which time I’d be long gone.

Tipping the brim of my baseball cap down so that it better obscured my face – just in case there was a hidden camera somewhere – I slipped on plastic gloves then, having found the key I was looking for, very slowly opened the gate. Even so, it still squeaked loudly.

I stepped inside, shutting the gate behind me, and slipped the gun from beneath the jacket I was wearing, screwing on the suppressor. I was in a small, secluded garden, well stocked with a variety of tropical plants. Sweet-smelling bougainvillea climbed up the walls of the house, and a table and chairs were arranged on a patio in front of locked French windows. The place looked like something out of the colonial era, and it struck me as I crept over to the front door, admiring the wooden shutters on the window, that they’d made a real effort with this place, and that if I had to live in Manila, I’d choose somewhere like this.

With the buildings next to it a good thirty feet away on either side, it also made it perfect for an assassination, since it was highly unlikely anyone would hear any shots.

I looked at my watch. 6.16. I’d managed to grab a few hours’ sleep, and was feeling alert if not refreshed. Although I’d had the phone on silent, I had two missed calls from Schagel. One at 3.30, the other an hour later. Which wasn’t like him at all. Calling me when I was on a job was both dangerous – just in case the phone went off at an inopportune moment – and a sign of impatience that I wouldn’t have expected from a consummate pro like Schagel. It made me uneasy.

Checking once again that the phone was on silent, I used the two other keys on the ring to open the front door, and was pleased to see that the target hadn’t deadbolted it from the inside. It was clear that Schagel was right, and he wasn’t expecting trouble. Either that or he was very careless.

I moved through the hallway in the direction of the staircase, trying hard but without success to ignore the photos on the walls. They were family pictures, featuring the silver-haired man I was here to shoot, and an attractive, middle-aged Filipina woman, who I assumed was his wife. There were also two kids. Both boys.
In some they were very young, but in the more recent ones they were adults in their early twenties. It crossed my mind that one or both of them might be at home, but I immediately dismissed the thought. Schagel would have known, and he would have told me. I might not have liked the guy but I trusted his information absolutely.

I didn’t like the idea of killing a man in his own home. I liked the idea of killing his wife there even less. Together in the marital bed. It was all too personal, because it showed me exactly what I was destroying. Not just two lives. But their whole, shared history as well.

I’d only killed people in their homes twice before, and both occasions were a long time ago. Plus, my victims had been brutal, sick killers themselves and had deserved everything that was coming to them. But this time . . .This time the intended victim was a journalist, for Christ’s sake. He’d dug something up on one of Schagel’s clients, and now he was being made to pay. As Schagel had pointed out, more journalists die in the Philippines than any other country in the world, and I doubted if very many of them were corrupt.

I could feel the doubts coming on, and I had to work hard to force them aside, something I was sadly getting better at as my body count grew.

But the stakes were higher this time. Do this, and Schagel had hinted that there might be a chance he’d let me retire and live out my life in my own secluded corner of the world, never hurting another human being again.

I mounted the stairs, gun out in front of me, listening hard to the silence, conscious of every squeak of the wooden steps.

And then, as I reached the top and found myself on a landing with doors to either side of me and too many photos
on the walls, I heard it. Coming from the room at the end.

The sound of a mobile phone ringing.

I heard movement behind the door, someone climbing out of bed, cursing sleepily.

Now was the time. Do it now, I told myself, and I could be out again in two minutes. Back at the hotel in ten.

There’s never any point in putting off the inevitable. It’s one of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned over the years.

So I didn’t. Taking deep, steady breaths, I yanked open the door in one movement.

The target, Patrick O’Riordan, was standing next to the bed. Stark naked, his silver hair all over the place, he was holding his trousers and rifling through the pockets, hunting for the mobile phone. The bed was empty.

He turned round as I raised the gun and his eyes widened. He looked so damn vulnerable, so shocked that his life had come to this sudden, abrupt point, that when he opened his mouth to speak, no words came out. His lips simply moved, and small burbling sounds came from between them. I could see first the fear, then the resignation in his eyes. And finally that first glint of hope as he realized I was hesitating.

The phone stopped ringing.

I pulled the trigger, twice, the gun kicking in my hand as he staggered backwards, hit both times in the chest. Then he fell back against the window, and slid slowly down it to the floor, his mouth filling with blood. And all the while he was staring at me as if he couldn’t believe how cruel I had been.

Unable to stand the accusation in his stare, I took four steps over to him, lowered the gun and, still trying to avoid those eyes, shot him a final time in the top of the head from point-blank range.

He grunted once and slid down on to his side, his eyes closed. I didn’t bother feeling for a pulse. Instead, I turned away and made for the door.

Which was when I heard the sound of a flushing toilet coming from the other end of the landing.

I just had time to close the door and get behind it. Keeping my breathing low and even, I listened as the footsteps came closer, the pace of their owner too casual for her to have heard anything.

Except when the door opened and the figure came inside, I saw that the her was actually a him, and a young one too. Probably no more than twenty, at most. Like O’Riordan, he was stark naked, except his body was a lot more toned, the ravages of age still yet to catch up with him.

If they ever did.

The kid, a local Filipino, gasped as he saw what had happened to his lover, and put a hand dramatically to his lips. He had his back to me but I could see him tense as he sensed my presence.

It was decision time.

The first rule of contract killing is always get rid of witnesses if it’s at all possible. It was perfectly possible now. I was already pointing the gun at him, and the fact that I’d pulled the trigger only seconds before made it a lot easier to do so again.

But I didn’t. Instead I told him not to turn round, trying my best to disguise my voice.

‘What have you done to him?’ he said, his voice cracking with emotion. Even though I couldn’t see his face, I could tell he was silently weeping. It was the way his shoulders were shaking. ‘Why did you hurt him?’

‘If you want to get out of here alive, you’ll do what I say. Get on your knees and put your hands behind your head. I’m going to throw you your clothes, you’re going to put them on, and then you’re going to walk out of here.’ Letting him go was madness, even if he hadn’t seen my face, I knew that. Yet I was finding it unbelievably hard to pull the trigger. He was so young, and I knew that if I killed him, he’d haunt my dreams for ever.

‘You bastard!’ he spat, and for the first time I noticed that he had a hint of an American accent. ‘You cold-hearted bastard!’

‘This is your last chance. Get on your knees.’

The speed with which he spun round and lunged at me, his face a twisted mask of grief and rage, caught me off-guard.

But only for a moment. I may have hated what I did for a living, but I’d been doing it long enough to have swift reflexes and, even with a combination of jetlag and a lack of sleep, I fired instinctively, the power of the round stopping him in his tracks.

He went down hard and loudly, rolling over on to his front, his body going into spasms as he clutched desperately at the bed sheets.

I shot him twice more, my gun hand steady as my business side took over, and a few seconds later he lay still.

Gun smoke drifted up through the silent room, and for a long moment I stayed where I was, staring down at the two bodies, wondering why O’Riordan’s lover had got himself killed when if he’d done what I’d told him, I’d almost certainly have let him live.

It was time to get out of there. I left the room, closing the door behind me, and headed back to the stairs, trying to push the brutal immensity of what I’d just done out of my mind. Instead, I concentrated on retirement, picturing myself on my balcony looking out across the tree line as it dropped towards the Mekong River, a beer in my hand, safe in the knowledge that I could live out my final days in peace.

If Schagel ever let me.

When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I noticed that the door to O’Riordan’s study was ajar. I pushed it open further and stepped inside, curious as to why his killing had had such a specific time limit attached. By two p.m. that afternoon or the job was off. It had also occurred to me that I couldn’t rely on Schagel to let me retire out of the kindness of his heart – since he didn’t appear to possess either the kindness or the heart – so any information I could find to bolster my bargaining power would be useful.